THEOS Cybernova

THEOS Cybernova – Kate Fazzini: Cyber Journalism, Crisis Comms & the Power of Storytelling

• Theos CyberNova • Season 1 • Episode 10

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How do journalists uncover the truth behind cybercrime? What makes or breaks a company’s crisis response? And why does storytelling matter in cybersecurity?

In this episode, Kate Fazzini, cybersecurity journalist, author, and former reporter for The Wall Street Journal and CNBC, joins Paul Jackson for a deep dive into cyber journalism, crisis communications, and the evolving battle against misinformation.

From major breaches to geopolitical cyber conflicts, Kate shares insights from her reporting career, the role of PR in cyber crises, and the challenges of attribution in cyber warfare. She also discusses her book, Kingdom of Lies: Unnerving Adventures in the World of Cybercrime, and why storytelling is such a critical skill in cybersecurity.

Kate breaks down the importance of clear, effective communication in high-stakes cyber incidents and how organizations can be better prepared when things go sideways.

A must-listen for cybersecurity pros, media insiders, and anyone curious about the way cyber stories are told—and why they matter.

Production Credits:

Presented by: Paul Jackson
Studio Engineer & Editor: Roy D'Monte
Executive Producers: Paul Jackson and Ian Carless
Co-produced by: Theos Cyber and W4 Podcast Studio

Paul Jackson:

Wherever you are in the world, welcome to the Theos Cybernova podcast. My name is Paul Jackson, your host, and before we begin, I've got a quick favor to ask from you. There's one simple way that you can support our show and that's by hitting that follow or subscribe button on the app you're listening to the show on right now. It makes a huge difference in helping get the show out there to as many people as possible, so please give us a hand and click that button now. The Theos Cybernova podcast hosted by Paul Jackson.

Paul Jackson:

So here we go with yet another fantastic episode of Theos Cyber Podcast. A couple of firsts today. Our first female guest is on today, and it's also our first time to have somebody who's never worked in the Asia-Pacific region. But we will, of course, be touching on a little bit about the Asia-Pacific region, as is normal on this show. A little bit about the Asia-Pacific region, as is normal on this show, but as usual each week, I'm digging into the latest trends, challenges and innovations shaping the cybersecurity landscape, always talking to a fantastic mix of leading industry experts, thought leaders, legal eagles, technologists and journalists, with a particular focus, as I mentioned, on the Asia-Pacific region. So, whether you're a professional in the field or simply curious about staying safe in the digital age. We hope Theos Cybernova will offer up valuable knowledge and actionable insights for everyone.

Paul Jackson:

Today, I'm delighted to welcome Kate Fazzini to the show. Kate is based in the US, on the West Coast, and she's up very early on a Friday morning to talk to me, and I'm here very late on a Friday evening. Kate, thank you so much for joining the show and thank you so much for joining us so early in the morning. How are you doing today?

Kate:

Absolutely, I'm doing great and, paul, I'm just thrilled to be here with you. So, paul and I have been colleagues in the past and I think the world of you. I love your show. Likewise, and I'm most pleased to be on, so thank you.

Paul Jackson:

Yeah. So, kate, of course, obviously I know you well. We worked together in the past and we've been friends. But how about you tell the audience you know a little bit of your career story and your background? How?

Kate:

about you tell the audience you know a little bit of your career story and your background. Sure, so I have a little bit of a diverse background. I started out my career I mean going all the way back to. I went to the Ohio State University where I studied Middle Eastern studies and also English literature, and this was I'm old now, so this was before 9-11. And when 9-11 happened, I ended up getting a job doing various contracting work. I got to work overseas. I was actually. I worked in China, I worked in the Middle East, I worked in Lebanon, northern Lebanon, wait, wait, wait. Israel.

Paul Jackson:

I paused you there, Kate, because you worked in China.

Kate:

I did. Well, I did a lot of trips over there. I specialized in industrial cybersecurity and so I got to our factories and get an idea of some of the emerging RFID technology. So I got it wrong factories and get an idea of, you know, some of the emerging ARFID technology.

Paul Jackson:

So I got it wrong in the intro. You have spent time in this region.

Kate:

No, I wouldn't say. I mean, these were not long trips, so I wouldn't claim that I worked in the Asia Pacific region, but I certainly got to have that international experience. But yeah, I'm not correcting you or anything, so don't worry. Okay, no, it was a short period of time but, um, I, I learned a lot. Uh, I learned to love cyber, um, as you know, and uh, ultimately somehow landed at a little, uh small financial shop called JP Morgan Chase where we worked together.

Kate:

And that's where I continued my cybersecurity education and I literally was very fortunate because back then they had that wonderful education program where they would reimburse you for your university degree.

Kate:

So I got my master's in cybersecurity while I was there, and after that, I went to a company called Promontory Financial Group, which was a boutique consultancy that ended up being acquired by IBM. And then after that, I left, and that was when I went to the Wall Street Journal. I had known reporters for a long time, I had been involved in a lot of freelance journalism, and so I covered cybersecurity for the Wall Street Journal and following that I went to CNBC, and since then I've just been a layabout essentially. I left CNBC, um, and since then I've just been a layabout essentially, um. I left CNBC during COVID. I have kids, uh, so I, um I took some time off, um, and uh, just just take on really interesting projects, uh that come across. The most recent one was with Bloomberg, um, and it was a podcast series with our mutual friend JF yes, who joined me on that.

Paul Jackson:

Yeah, of course JF was actually telling me about that the other day that he'd been on with you Does he hate me.

Kate:

I always assume, for whatever reason.

Paul Jackson:

Absolutely not.

Kate:

I'm very negative. I hate you.

Paul Jackson:

But for those who haven't ever read the works of Kate and I do encourage you because we'll talk about her published book in a moment, but on LinkedIn you can see, or on the blog you can see how creative and how good with words. And I'm really jealous of this, kate, because although I get invited to speak at a lot of conferences and do chairing panels and obviously now doing this podcast, I've never been that good at writing stuff. And when I read your stuff I'm so envious of the way that you get the words across, the way you know I can visualize things so easily in the flow of how you communicate and it's a gift and, as I say, very envious of how you do that.

Kate:

That's very kind of you, paul, and it means a lot to me. I'm a huge fan of writing and I love good writing, and it's a really interesting time, I think, for writers, storytellers, having a little bit more power than in the past, where you have, you know, there has long been this very dry sort of understanding of technology and it would be so rare that you would go into some sort of technology company and there would be someone with with a good way, with words and the ability to describe their product.

Paul Jackson:

So right, so right. And and you know is one of my bugbears and in other podcasts I've actually talked about it is that you can be the best technical person in the world, but if you can't tell that story, if you can't make it understandable to business leaders or you know whoever you're trying to communicate to, then it's all for naught, isn't it really?

Kate:

Absolutely. I mean you, I think, one of the really interesting things. You know, elon Musk has such a divisive figure in a lot of ways, but I think, um, he certainly. I mean he bought Twitter and and that was this storytelling platform and and you have the fact that he can put out these. You know, whether you're talking about Doge or whatever he's into, you know, whatever day it is, it's something different, but he has the ability to pick something out of that story and illustrate the problem. So he can pick out something that Doge found, even if it was $8 million, to some kind of crazy thing you had never heard of, and that gets the message across to people in a way that saying we found $500 trillion or something like that doesn't. He can do that very well and I just see that as something that's really emerging.

Kate:

There are a lot of technologists who can't do that. So, also with artificial intelligence and I've worked along the way. I taught cybersecurity and cyber warfare at Georgetown University and DeSheva University in New York and I've seen the evolution of AI and the way students do their papers and sort of the loss of creativity that comes along with the AI, and I don't see that. I have seen very much AI generated content and there's tons of it that gets any kind of meaning across, and maybe I'm wrong, but it just seems like there is still room for telling a unique story in this space. I don't know. What do you think?

Paul Jackson:

Well, yes, I agree with you entirely, because I use AI all the time, because I am useless at writing Right, but it does help me to try and articulate. But but now I'll go back to your blog post that when I reconnected with you just recently because you did disappear off the map for a little while, didn't you now and I don't- know if you want to talk about that you spent time in the desert.

Kate:

I did. Yeah, Well, I moved out here from New York and I actually I drove from New York to San Diego, California, with my kids and we did sort of the Wild West exploration trip.

Paul Jackson:

And then, yeah, I did some meditating in the desert well, it obviously worked because the the writing you've produced since then, in the weeks since then, has been nothing sort of short of beautiful. Because I think I told you, didn't I, that you wrote this post and it was a quite a long one and very reflective, and I generally I start reading the first power and with most of these kind of articles, that's about it, that's about as far as I get. You had me on the hook right from the first power, read it all through, and then I then I sat down and reread it all again. It was that good, and I tell you now that is so rare for me to do that, and so obviously that little breakout in the desert and meditating or whatever you did, did you some good Well.

Kate:

I might just go back. I think no please don't.

Paul Jackson:

If you do take a second, we all need to at some point.

Kate:

Right, I think they used to call it a midlife crisis. Now we call it something like self-care, or who knows.

Paul Jackson:

Well, as you were going through your intro, you mentioned the word old and I just scribbled it down on the notepad I've got next to me, because if anybody can make anybody feel young, it's me out here. So there we go. These days I do feel it, but let's not dwell on that. Let's talk about a few other things. For example right, so you've, you've obviously been a journalist with elite publications, right, clearly right, you know world famous news newspapers, but you've also done in-house PR work, right, and what's what's? What's the big differences then, between you know, those in, you know, for those who you know, just working on a career and thinking you know I'm good at writing, I'm good at communicating. A career in cyber communications might be for me. What's your experiences?

Kate:

That's a really interesting question. I think you know one of the things I think the best PR people I've worked with have been journalists at some point, and this is because you have to understand what the journalist is both up against. Nine times out of 10, the journalist is making maybe half what you are. So the person you're talking to might have you know especially if you're talking to somebody who's like from the New York Times or something they might have more power than you in the sense that they're going to publish something about your company. But you have to think of your position as not the necessarily weak position, and so when something has happened, you know they first of all, especially at large publications, journalists do not want to talk to you. They want to talk to your CISO or your CEO, or they want to talk to somebody who is going to give them what would be considered the more authentic information. So it's not going through your filter.

Kate:

So I think, when it comes to if we're talking about a crisis which I think we kind of discussed this before we got on if you have a breach or something like that, understand that the reporter is going to not consider you to be the authority on the matter. And so you get a lot of PR people who come into this relationship being a little combative, and you know this isn't true or you know I'm going to have to go back and ask somebody. Well, this reporter is poor, they're on deadline, they have a family to get home to, just like you do, and have the information. You should have the information ready to go and have your people trained and ready to talk. I, I, the companies that I reported on, where a lot of times people because I had a background in the space, they knew me already and I could just call without having to go through a public relations person.

Kate:

And you know, I'm sort of rambling a little bit, I'm sorry, no, no, it's fascinating, you know okay, but you know, there were times when you're working as a journalist, especially covering cybersecurity, you're expected to talk to CISOs every day. I had an editor at the Wall Street Journal who would say, like you know, call 100 of them, like, call 100, 200 today to get their opinion on this, because one of them might talk to you. And that's true. That's about as far as you'll go.

Paul Jackson:

I would never call the PR. Sounds like such a tough life.

Kate:

It's very much like sales. In a way it's cold calling. I can tell this story objectively. I'm not going to make any promises to you because I can't. I can't say I'm going to say this or say that because it can get changed. But you know, I promise you that I'll understand what you're saying and, you know, can make sense of it and to get through, you know, the companies that I respected the most and that I still respect the most, put me right through to their CISO and I would get a nervous CISO who maybe had never really spoken directly to a journalist before. But that's. You know much better information than I'm going to get from anybody else and I think, yeah, that's. You know. If there's a crisis happening, it's going to happen at your company and it's better to have that transparency, to have your people ready, have everybody ready to be able to speak.

Paul Jackson:

Well, does that happen very often, though? I doubt it does right.

Kate:

It almost never happens, yeah, never.

Paul Jackson:

And yet the PR is sometimes the most important thing, isn't it? Because in a breach, you know that you're the voice and the face of the company and you know whether you're talking to journalists or whether you're doing. You know the announcements or whatever over social media or over the website or whatever. There's got to be an art to this, hasn't there? And there's got to be a skill and there's got to be practiced, hasn't there? There's got to be, you know, preparation. There's got to be readiness and resilience to what you're going to say, right? So you know. Obviously you've lived through major breaches and from the other side, I mean, what are the best strategies for going public early and being transparent? I mean, is it better to go early and be transparent or is it best to fly under the radar? Get as much information as you can before you go live? What's the best?

Kate:

That's a good question, I think. I think it matters less now than it used to, because there is such a flood of information, uh, that people are a little bit more blind to. Oh, here's another one, you know, um, I think with the ransomware, some of the ransomware stories and these, a lot of these, came out after I left journalism. I I thought you know what the information about these enormous insurance payments coming out the way that they did is just so bad. I certainly know a lot of people in the healthcare industry, but I thought the UnitedHealthcare incident was not handled very well and it continues to not be handled very well. There's just not enough information about what happened and I think that part of that is because it had so many effects on different companies.

Kate:

I certainly have heard stories I would love to have seen in the public sphere from people and there's a saying that I heard often at the Wall Street Journal, which was the best story I've ever worked on is the one that didn't get published. And there are so many stories that don't get published, partially because, you know, the standards are much higher, I think, than people realize, that we have to have several sources and legal gets involved and all of these things. But there are so many interesting stories that I think would be helpful to people and companies that just didn't get told out of those breaches that I, I wish, I wish could get out. But I think if you go all the way back to the, the target breach, the one that everybody knows about I can't remember what year it was now- it was 2013,.

Paul Jackson:

I'm guessing 2012,.

Kate:

Guessing 2012, 2012, maybe 2012 15 years ago, um, so the target breach at home depot breaches at which happened? The home depot breach was announced, I think shortly after that. They happened very close to the same time. Target chose to be radically transparent about it and announce before christmas. Home depot made the other decision and waited a little bit. Now they probably made the better decision, home depot, because target, if you recall, I think that there were some firings, there was a lot of, there was a ton of fallout. If you have any women in your family and you celebrate Christmas, you know what Christmas is like. That's almost sexist, I'm a little crazy. Around Christmas too, people are already freaking out and then they find out their credit card's been canceled and all this stuff happens because of Target and I just I think that there's a timing issue where releasing certain information might be unhelpful, but, um, it's difficult for the most part how are you supposed to make that call you know right in the onset of a crisis?

Kate:

it's true. I I mean and and it's it's very difficult now. I think that now that the laws have changed and you have a 72 hour or sometimes, I think, in some jurisdictions an even shorter time period to disclose a breach, the decision's already been made for you, so you kind of don't have to think through. Maybe I should wait a week. You're just going to have to go forward with it. But at the same time, it certainly helps if you have comms, people who understand cybersecurity, so that when that messaging gets out there, they're also on the same page.

Paul Jackson:

Right, let's switch gears a little bit and let's talk about social media and misinformation campaigns, because, wow, is this ever a tough one. Right, how, with you know? How do you view this? Because, I mean, some people would say, actually, mainstream media don't exactly, uh, give you all the facts and, um, you know, and in social media, we're certainly, um, you know, we're at the mercy of the algorithms who create these echo chambers of information, which is sometimes misinformation or misguided, or not telling us the full facts. How do we ever going to fix this?

Kate:

I don't know that we'll ever fix it, but I think that there's a couple of different threads there. One of them that comes to mind is that on social media, when it comes to technology in general and cybersecurity specifically, it seems like everything is possible. So you see a lot of speculation about things that are happening with your phone, or with breaches or ransomware or insider threats and things like that that you and I would would know to be kind of a fanciful idea of how talented people really are to hack and constantly watch and monitor your every move. Does it exist? Yes, but if you're not the president of the United States, there's probably not too much of a chance of that happening to you.

Kate:

Now, when it comes to misinformation from, like, a campaign or something that's a foreign government, obviously we know that these things happen. I think it's just it's so difficult to be able to figure out when information is swarming around. They tried to do it here with the DHS CISA organization doing some monitoring, but it's just such a heavy lift that I think that there's a technical solution to it, especially when these misinformation campaigns are coming from similar sources and there's a way to determine whether you know certain talking points or whatever are all coming together from you know another government but then do like, then we have to come up with the standards by which we filter that information, and there's so much to happen still.

Paul Jackson:

Yeah, I kind of get that and that also kind of links in with attribution, you know, as to not only where misinformation is coming from but where cyber attacks are coming from, and I think we kind of fed a little bit in the media. You know, one side is good, the other side is bad, and when the good guys do it it's for a good reason, right when they hack and when the bad guys do, it.

Kate:

It's for a bad.

Paul Jackson:

You know, it's like a Hollywood movie, right? So what I mean? How should we be portraying this? Because, yeah, I pointed you in the direction of an interesting article which a very rare article which actually, rather than pointing the fingers at Russia, china, north Korea, you know, etc. Etc. It pointed the finger at the US. And it was quite an interesting article with lots of evidence, and it was a bit of a.

Kate:

It caused a bit of well, let's just say interest A little bit of a stir, yeah, a little bit of a stir, yeah, yeah, certainly. I mean, if you go back to World War II, you know the UK had an entire division that was devoted to I'm not going to say planting stories. It makes it sound more insidious than it is. I think we can all agree that we don't like Nazis. There were news organizations. They would plant news stories that you know called out these various organizations, or you know there's been books written about this, and so the US and our allies have always been engaged in the use of information in this way. I think, where, you know, we have this famous quote about yelling fire in a crowded theater.

Kate:

And when you look at some of what Russia accomplished, I'm going to go back to 2016 with their online campaigns, where they actually were able to create scenarios where you had, um, real rallies taking place that had been organized by identities that were, um, russian intelligence people who had established identities that made it look like they were some person in Texas or, um, some person, uh, you know, for for years, for many years, and had thousands, tens of thousands of followers, and they would create these events that happened in person and people would show up and they would be riled up and the themes would be very volatile and at the same time if you've looked at some of the reporting out of that, you had these very extreme left-wing organizations. Some of them were sort of like African-American, based in New York, also spun up by Russian intelligence, by Russian intelligence, and so you have this scenario where you have people fighting each other, sometimes in real life, just total chaos on the most extreme sides of things. So I think preventing chaos in real life and preventing security issues and loss of life in real life should be the priority of that. The rest of it is, you know, countries have been working with propaganda since countries were invented and we're never going to stop that.

Paul Jackson:

So attribution, on hacks as well, is an interesting one, you know, not just about misinformation, but, um, it tends. What I see is that the you know, the newspapers are fed um from whatever government well, usually a us agency and it's printed as gospel, with a limited amount of questioning as to whether the evidence is, you know, valid, because there's a lot of uses of words like alleged and, you know, suspected, blah, blah, blah, but the newspapers normally spin it into reality. So I mean, obviously, at the moment there's a lot of focus on, well, in our region, china, obviously, and North Korea, and what is the perception of the US public? You know, you're sat over there. I mean, is it just everyone thinks that China and North Korea just constantly hacking the US now as a result of these news articles?

Kate:

I think there's a lot of interesting things that have emerged, and one of them is that, I mean, if I were to criticize journalists, I don't have a problem with that, but it always comes back on you. When you do, that's one thing you catch. But I think there is a limited understanding of the you know, hacking capabilities of other countries in the world, and I see particularly the narrative that you mentioned about North Korea being just this complete juggernaut in the world of hacking and outsized as to what they are capable of doing. Yes, they have capabilities, so what they have, more than anything, is like what's the word? Nothing to lose? They have nothing to lose from this. So I think that the issue that should be considered is when you have a country that seems to have this sort of outsized ability, and I think we've done. I think that the evidence I've seen as far as the funds coming from North Korea is pretty strong.

Paul Jackson:

There's a lot of stuff that comes out about China.

Kate:

That I don't think is very strong, and I think that a lot of what and I've written about this and I wrote about this at CNBC that there have been several reports from the US intelligence community about China, and particularly Huawei and ZTE the technology companies having these implicit ties to the communist government, and that everything that they create is a surveillance operation.

Kate:

There are plenty of people who will. I will sit down and talk to them and they will convince me that that's 100% true and I'll listen to it. But I have also listened to people who are on the other side of it and the one thing that has frustrated me the most is that I have not seen evidence of that, that they have released reports and they say you know so much of this stuff is classified. And I've had other people say the same thing to me you know well, it's classified. Of course, they can't tell you why they think Huawei is surveilling everyone and I'm like, but they can tell me technically what they think is happening, like. I would like to know precisely where the information is going.

Paul Jackson:

It's a shame you're not still a journalist then, isn't it? But you're right. These are the questions that don't seem to get asked.

Kate:

I just want you to tell like then you can tell me that it's not like it's going to change things. So there's certainly a frustration from a lot of people that the US government does make these assertions that China is watching you and their equipment is watching you and, of course, huawei equipment is all over Europe europe so it's never like it's. My understanding is that it's very difficult to rip it out and replace it with anything that's not right. Right, you know as as most.

Paul Jackson:

well, let's switch gears again because, um, conscious of time a little bit here, and as we, as we head towards the end of the end of this show, which has been fascinating, by the way. Thank you so much for joining us. But I would love to plug your book a little bit now. Your book, your book is called the Kingdom of Lies, right, well, it's got a longer title, but Incenses and the Kingdom of Lies, what made you want to be an author then? I mean, I know you're a journalist, so I guess it comes with the territory, right.

Kate:

But yeah, I think I wanted. I certainly wanted to tell stories, and tell the stories of a lot of what's in Kingdom of Lies is stuff that was on the cutting room floor of the Wall Street Journal for various reasons. One of them is that I did a lot of interviews with criminals and I talked with people who either claimed they were criminals or had been indicted and, you know, were legitimately criminals, I don't know, but they, you know, have had these wonderful stories, these very interesting stories, and and and stories of being able to sort of have gone either way. So if you're really good at hacking in general, let's say, um, you can, you can be a good guy or a bad guy, and and there's there's various roads that you can take to that.

Kate:

And I thought that I wanted people to be able to see themselves in this world, because I certainly experience. I'm sure you have people in your life and your family who feel like there's two worlds and it's like the world they live in and the world of hackers and high technology and all of this kind of wacky mathematical stuff that's happening and it's not like that at all, and a lot of these people are just people kind of muddling their way through life and I just want people to feel that they have that agency. And it was fun.

Paul Jackson:

It was very fun, yeah writing a book and it hit the number one on the new york best seller chart right oh yeah, totally.

Kate:

That's why I know, um, so it was. It was a best seller in in the uk uh it was on the on some list um I'm sorry that I'm really bad at this. I'm actually my publisher hates me. I'm really bad at promoting.

Paul Jackson:

Well, let me do it for you. Everybody, go out and buy Kingdom of Lies by Kate Fazzini. It's a brilliant read. And when's the next? When's the follow-up coming? We've been waiting a decade nearly for the follow-up.

Kate:

I know, well, I think I do. I have a couple of things I'm working on, so there are some pretty exciting projects um that I have underway. Uh, and I I have been working on something for Rolling Stone. I'm hoping that's going to publish. So yeah, so uh, interesting. I can't, I can't plug it yet.

Kate:

No, because there's still some investigating to be done, so we'll see. But uh, that's, that's something that I, you know, big dream of mine to have put together a piece for them, um. But uh, you know, the it's just, it was a very interesting experience, um, and I got so much support uh from so many people uh along the way um some I have had some really great mentors um yeah, well, I certainly.

Paul Jackson:

I mean I didn't buy the book, including you, paul, I I, yes, including me, but I I chose how old I well, how long ago it was. I was in the us. I don't know if they still sell nooks. Do they still sell nooks in the us? You know those books ebook readers like, is that like a kindle?

Kate:

yeah, from barnes and noble oh, that's right, they, yeah, I remember they.

Paul Jackson:

Oh, barnes and Noble they probably don't sell it. It's been 10 years or more since I lived in the US, but anyway, I immediately bought your book on on from Barnes and Noble. Oh, okay, oh good.

Kate:

Hopefully they let you keep it forever, and it's not they do it's still on there. Good, yeah, that's, that's good, but I so the book was a bestseller in Poland. That was the one, uh, and it was very interesting. I did this, I, I so now I'm like I'm just a huge lover of poland. I just assume that absolutely the smartest people on the planet um.

Paul Jackson:

Why poland? Why?

Kate:

because, well, there is uh uh, some threads that go through eastern europe in there, and and one of the primary interviews that I did was with um, a woman in romania, romania who was, who worked as a social engineer at a company that did ransomware, kind of early ransomware innovation, and so that was of interest, but it was really cool to see it in Polish and do some interviews with them. It was great.

Paul Jackson:

All right, very cool. Well, I'm going to have to get you. You know, I'm going to have to get you back on the show sometime in a few months time as well. I've really enjoyed this chat, but we try and keep these at around 35 minutes. So we just passed that at the moment. And I've got one more question for you, because I always ask this of all my guests, because I'm a big music lover. Right, I've got. I'm at home at the moment and in front of me, record collection, my vinyl record collection, because I'm old-fashioned that way and I, you know, it's my way of decompressing. You go out in the desert, I put a vinyl record on the turntable and, um, it's my it does sound better, you're.

Paul Jackson:

You're absolutely right it's a lot easier, that's for sure. What do you listen to, kate? What? What floats your?

Kate:

boat, I I'm. I'm a huge lover of jam bands and I there's uh that made you know them. They're called the Waterboys.

Paul Jackson:

I do.

Kate:

An Irish.

Paul Jackson:

They're in my record collection.

Kate:

Wonderful. They are my favorites and they have these wonderful, wonderful live recordings. Yes, they're great for going out in the desert with. So, yeah, the.

Paul Jackson:

Waterboys. I didn't expect that, kate, that's a great. Oh, wow, okay, I love that, yeah.

Kate:

They've got a wonderful fiddle player.

Paul Jackson:

Yes, they do, yes, they do. And beautiful music. And he's also a poet, isn't he, you know?

Kate:

and especially a lot of his recent stuff. Yeah, the lyrics are fantastic.

Paul Jackson:

Yeah, beautiful stuff. Kate Vizzini, thank you so much for being on the show with us and you know I wish you all the best and wish you luck with that upcoming article. I'll be following. You know what it's all about. You've made it all very mysterious. Rolling Stone, right? Okay, very curious. Hopefully We'll see. We'll see, okay. Well, thank you very much. Thank you, a real pleasure.

Kate:

Thank you, paul. Thank you, it's my pleasure, it's wonderful to see you again.

Paul Jackson:

Theos Cybernova, the studio engineer and editor was Roy DeMonte, the executive producer was myself and Ian Carlos, and this podcast is a co-production between Theos Cyber and W4 Podcast Studio in Dubai.

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